Discussion topic for Bernkastel, the Witch of Miracles. Feel free to discuss the entirety of Umineko without [spoiler] tags, but please tag references to outside works, providing adequate context in parenthesis. This topic will contain massive spoilers, so if you have not finished reading Umineko yourself proceed with caution.

I like to think that she is as cruel as she appears. Witches are fickal beings, and seem to only act a certain way if it serves their best interests. When Bernkastel agrees to help Ange, it seems as if she wants to help her, but in reality she wants to bring in another factor to make Beatrice suffer. She’s also shown multiple times that she gets a kick out of playing around with Erika and treats her as she describes her, as furniture. If she wanted to please Battler and be kind and loving, I’m sure she would have had no problem with summoning Erika back, but after Erika lost against Battler and Beatrice, she lost a use for her and discarded her until she needed her again.

All throughout Chiru, she put into motion plans to make Beatrice and Battler suffer, since she loves to hold grudges. The only being that she shows any sort of affection to is Lamdadelta, which I find is not really “love” (even though she says she loves her a few times) but maybe more a respect for someone equal to her in power.

Overall, I enjoy Bernkastel as an antagonist and really liked her development in Chiru.

Edit: Had a theory with her connection to Higurashi, but spoiler tags seem to be a difficulty for me, so maybe I’ll post it when I figure out what I’m doing wrong.

When discussing the motivations of meta characters I like to think about things on multiple levels. For Bern in particular we have her existence as the witch of miracles, and what that represents. We also have (Higurashi Spoilers) the fact that she is all the Rikas that failed. That was her hell of a logic error and it makes her spitefulness make sense.

But another important view to consider is why she is in the tale Ikuko and Tohya are writing. Bern is based on Ikuko’s cat, so some parts of her mischievous personality come from that fact. But that also places Bern’s role on Ikuko’s side of the Ikuko-Tohya writing relationship. Bern’s role in the story is that of an antagonist. It’s a necessary role for both Battle and Ange. You could say Bern’s villain-hood is a necessary evil.

So that begs the question is she like Evatrice, playing the bad guy for the good of others, or is she actually that cruel? Well that was the original question I guess, and all I did was present a potential reason for her to have not been that cruel.

However I’m inclined to say she really is like that. The story gave no indication of redemption like it did with basically everyone else. Her cruelty was a necessary part of the equation, but it was not an act.

It is worth noting that in a different scenario Lamda could have been the bad guy and Bern the good guy. Lamda has shown just as much tendency to cruelty and opposing Bern was in no small part part of her motivation to help everyone at the end.

But another important view to consider is why she is in the tale Ikuko and Tohya are writing.

I guess I keep forgetting to add that to my thinking, maybe I’m just used to thinking about them as real characters and not creations of a their writing. I believe that’s what you were saying with that.

ctom42:

The story gave no indication of redemption like it did with basically everyone else.

That’s what I was saying. She was pretty cruel right till the end, and stayed that way till the end. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t understand why she did that, because I think I did. If what you said about her backstory is true, which I’m sure it is.

I think it would have been interesting if there was some more insight with her character, but then again, maybe I’m not remembering certain scenes.

I think one of the most interesting aspects of Bernkastel’s character is her origin and how it relates to Higurashi.

It’s heavily implied that (lots of Higurashi spoilers) Bern is the result of an unfinished game between Featherine and Lambdadelta. The events of Higurashi are just a few fragments from a game board that Featherine - through her piece, Hanyuu - has abandoned, leaving the game in a state of logic error. This leftover piece is simply an observer, unable to act on events directly. Through some sort of miracle a separate, insignificant piece on the gameboard was able to bring about the conclusion of the game after travelling through thousands of fragments to reach an impossibly ideal scenario - Rika. She even convinces Featherine’s abandoned piece to join the fight, and manages to end the game. This almost-endless struggle gave birth to a new witch, who takes on the suffering of Rika’s thousands of bad ends in her place, so that the piece can experience a happy ending. Bernkastel actually appears in a hidden scene in Higurashi (or in the anime, if you watched it) which I believe further confirms that these are more than simple parallels but are in fact, the same character, in a sense.

I think that Bernkastel’s status as Ikuko’s former cat represents (beyond a reference to Rika’s punishment game outfits!) her role as an ascended piece on Featherine’s side of the board, hence Ikuko’s previous ownership of her. The miracle parallels are obvious, as is her relationship with Lambdadelta - who is equally responsible for Bern’s suffering and existence through her role on the previous game board, represented by her piece, Takano.

I’d like to draw parallels between Lambda and Takano’s “God”, but that’s another story…

Zumo:

Is she really as cruel as she appears or do you think that she is actually faking it?

I wouldn’t call her cruel, but rather empty. Her personality matches up with “dark” Rika, on the occasions where the despair of too many doomed timeliness catches up with her. Her cynical attitude only shows a lack of empathy, in my opinion. The characters that she shares most emotion with are Lambda (who as previously explained is the cause of Bernkastel’s despair, and yet the very reason she exists. As such, this relationship is very much a love-hate ordeal, although my words don’t quite do it justice) and Battler ( who has also had that similar experience of a logic error) and both are justified.

That said, I don’t think she’s “faking it”. She schemes and plots to incite despair in the other members of the cast deliberately, but is she really capable of anything else? For a witch with nothing but suffering as her companion, I doubt she has an alternative to this cruelty.

I do think it’s kind of funny that Rika pretty much did the exact same thing to Keiichi that Lambda says Hanyuu did to Rika: that is, she put him in a dead end situation, where the only way he could escape was to find some way to solve Rika’s problem for her (Which he eventually did). Although I don’t think Rika did it intentionally.

I disagree with one major part of your interpretation. (Higurashi/Umineko Spoilers) Hannyu is not featherine’s piece, but featherine herself. Featherine’s bio in Umineko states that at one point in time her memory control unit was damaged and it caused her personality to change. The unit in question is the device around her head that looks like Hanyuu’s horns. Hanyuu’s horn has a chunk missing from it, the horn is the damaged memory unit, hence why she had a very different personality to Featherine. Bern wasn’t just a random piece on the board, she was Featherine’s piece, but Featherine gave up on winning, leaving Rika to do everything herself. It wasn’t until the miracle occurred and the others started to remember the other loops that Hanyuu was convinced to actually join the game again. It is also worth noting Bern’s nickname for Hanyuu, Au-au-rora is a direct reference to Hanyuu’s speech pattern.

[spoiler]Maybe the ‘logic error’ was the events being avoided, like for almost every single situation that the GM whipped up, it ended in the same “bad end” when the GM had it written it to be good? That’s really the only thing I can think of that might resemble a logic error. Featherine did not want to deal with the game board anymore and then dumped the responsibility onto Rika.

Besides the dumping on logic error on her piece, I wonder how similar the treatment was between Featherine and Bernkastel and how Bernkastel treats Erika? [/spoiler]

This… is where my theory runs out of steam. The [spoiler]logic error[/SPOILER] I’m referring to is mentioned in Umineko, but only in passing, as a part of Bern’s backstory (in fact, I’m not even sure who says this, time for a re-read I guess!) and I can only link it to the events of Higurashi through the shared theme of an “endless loop”. I’m not sure exactly what the cause is, and I guess it might even be a retcon, since a lot of Higurashi’s story is expanded on in Umineko. To me, it’s another thing that, while not explicitly stated to be related, is too similar to ignore.

I never said it was something in that game, it probably happened beforehand, or it was something that happened in the level above the game.

As for the logic error, it’s my understanding from Umineko that the Featherine abandoned the game and Bern as a piece to solve it on her own. Whether or not there was an explicit error or the GM abandoning the game was itself the error is unclear.

About logic error:
I think I remember Lambda saying something like “you shouldn’t have let the dead bodies roam” to Featherine, Higurashi spoilers: one of which in my opinion is Hōjō Teppei in Tatarigoroshi(since there is no explanation to how his body disappered. And this is the only arc not explained in Kai. Well the arc itself is there, but the mystery is never explained, as Keiichi takes different approach to Satoko’s problem). But then it bothers me how was the error ‘resolved’ ?
Or maybe it’s just me, since I couldn’t google it anywehere :SAnother possibilty is the addition of Hanyuu to the gameboard, since it’s forbidden to have supernatural being involved.
Yet another possibility is that the ending of Higurashi is not the canon, and has been made up by Ikuko (Featherine, if you’d like) out of boredom (which would explain Hanyuu’s physical appearence and introduce logic error (like Hanyuu stopping time in human mod or her existence, per se)). Bernkastel did somehow manage to resolve it (which is never shown to the player. There’s still about 900 years between Higurashi and Umineko, according to Bernkastel’s age) and spoiled the right answer to Lambdadelta.

Hōjō Teppei in Tatarigoroshi(since there is no explanation to how his body disappered.)

Well, I think that’s a result of (Higurashi spoilers) the other club members figuring out what Keiichi did, and Mion using her connections to hide/relocate the body. Keiichi of course, doesn’t notice this and freaks out. He also mistakes passers-by as Teppei, just like how Satoshi mistook passers-by as his aunt, who should be dead. It’s a case of unreliable narration and a symptom of Hinamizawa syndrome. Although I suppose her quote could be a reference to this anyway. But keep in mind that letting “dead bodies roam” is exactly what [spoiler]Takano did in the original arcs - her faked death actually occurred a day earlier than possible, leading to an “impossible” scenario! [/Spoiler]So I don’t think that’s the error, but you raised some great points.

(Higurashi spoilers) Well, in that case the question is how did they know where the body was? Also, I don’t remember Keiichi mistaking passers-by as Teppei. But in any case, I don’t think this was the error, so this isn’t really the right thread for us to discuss it.

All in all, I find the references to the Higurashi ‘game board’ in Umineko illogical at best (ironically) and potentially Higurashi-ruining at worst.

The highlight of Bernkastel for me was at the end of ch.3 when I finally realized she was voiced by Yukari Tamura but other than that I don’t like her much.

The same goes for Lambda and Featherine, I dislike that these characters are overpowered and have nothing to lose. Even if they are just personifications of the concepts they represent, IMO they should’ve acted entirely from the sidelines and let their pieces take the antagonist role. Battler hitting Bern didn’t mean anything to me, it didn’t make sense but hey being badass is expected from the main character.

I like cruel characters. I like stoic and depressed characters. I should’ve liked Bern but every time she declared she was bored (and that’s way too often) she killed my immersion. Those moments I paused and thought “Am I bored aswell? Do I really care about these characters as much as I think I do?” And I realized I was exactly like these voyager witches with no actual connection to these events, only following the story for my own amusement and capable of throwing the VN into oblivion never to be seen again. I hated Bern for that.